


a losing game

by icarriedamango



Category: WandaVision (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:48:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29886189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarriedamango/pseuds/icarriedamango
Summary: "What is grief if not love persevering?"
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Monica Rambeau
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	a losing game

Our goodbye lasts eight months. 

Just enough for my grief to simmer to an occasional tidal wave. 

Most days, I can breathe just fine. Most days there are enough problems in need of fixing, on earth and above it, to keep my heart just above water. 

Today, though? 

Today would have been mom’s fifty-sixth birthday and I’m drowning. 

It looks like sitting quietly on the porch of the house I grew up in. It looks like gazing at the sky, gold and gorgeous. The sun loves Louisiana best, mom used to say. I don’t come here often. Only when there’s nowhere else I can be.

From a distance, it looks like a bird at first. Closer, like a person. Closer still, like a raw nerve. 

Wanda glides down, feet landing quietly on the grass, red leather transforming into blue jeans and a black hoodie as she walks. She stops at the edge of the porch.

Hi.

Hey. SWORD has been searching for her since the Westview incident. They’ve never gotten closer to her location than a wrong guess.

Can I sit? 

Sure. She climbs the steps. Sits next to me. Doesn’t say another word. 

It’s hours until the sun finally goes down. Dinner? 

She nods, follows me inside. I make french toast and bacon and eggs. 

Coffee or tea?

Tea, thanks. 

The tea lives in a ceramic jar I painted in third grade, red and blue and gold, cracked and glued back together. It’s just Lipton, I tell her. That’s what my mom liked.

We eat and sip to the scrape of our forks moving through syrup. Wanda washes the dishes when we’re done. Hands them to me for drying.

I miss him more now, she says, handing the last cup over.

That makes sense.

She faces me then. Leans against the sink. Does it?

There was more to be missed, I answer.

She looks down. I think about what you said to me. About how you would have brought your mom back. I don’t think that’s true.

It is, though.

It’s not, she says, looking back up. I had to learn to be a hero. I’m still learning. I don’t think you had to learn that. 

My throat tightens. I swallow hard. I haven’t cried yet today. Being a hero is a losing game, I say.

Her small smile is a crack. I would like to stop playing, she admits.

You won’t, though.

She cracks some more. No, I won’t.

This house is just a place to hold memories now, I tell her. You could come here when you need. When you get too tired.

I’m always tired.

Then the door will always be open. I’m going to head up. There are towels and necessities in the hall closet upstairs. The extra bedroom is small, but it’s there if you need it.

I shower and change and sleep in my mom’s bed. It’s deep into the night when I wake, a whisper-light sensation pulling me from sleep. Wanda is there. Hovering near the window, gazing at the stars.

You expecting trouble?

Always. Did I wake you?

Didn’t you mean to?

I don’t think I’ve slept since… Her feet drop to the floor. I don’t sleep, she finishes. 

I slide over to the other side of the bed. If you want, I say, nodding at the open space. I get comfortable, pull the covers back over my shoulders, turn away as I close my eyes. It’s twenty minutes later when the bed dips. Twenty minutes after that when she asks, why are you so kind to me? 

Do you want me to be mean to you?

Yes. 

I turn around. Stare at Wanda’s profile as she stares at the ceiling. And what would that look like? Me being mean to you?

I don’t know, but I think it would feel better than this.

Maybe that’s your punishment.

Her breath catches.

Maybe you don’t get to feel better yet. My words shudder over her skin. What you did? I understand it, I do. But those people in Westview…there’s no right to be made from it. 

Wanda closes her eyes. I track the tear sliding down the side of her face. It falls into the pillow. 

My whole life has been pain. And I just—her voice cracks.

Another tear tumbles. I catch it with my fingertip. I sit up, just a little, bracing my weight on my elbow. I trace the tear along the line of her jaw and up the other side. Across her brow, down her nose, over her lips. She stops breathing as my fingers move. I imagine no one touches her. That she doesn’t allow it. That if she did, the proposition would be too frightening. 

The tears stop falling. Her breathing starts again.

Maybe every now and again we just need a respite, I say. My fingers stop on her lips. 

She faces me. Are you going to give that to me?

Her eyes are intense, everything about her a line pulled taught, straining not to break.

Are you going to give that to me? I ask back.

It’s a long time of us lying there like that. Silence and my fingers brushing against her bottom lip.

It’s Wanda who leans in first, kisses me on a sob. I swallow the sound. Imagine my body turning it into grace and kissing it back into her mouth. We kiss long and hard and soft and deep. 

She removes my t-shirt and my shorts and my underwear and keeps all of her clothes on. I try to remove her hoodie, try to unbutton her jeans. Each time, she moves my hands, places them back on the bed. 

She takes my nipple into her mouth, then as much of my breast as she can fit. The light scrape of teeth is a bow arching my back. 

I grab onto her. Push into her. Glide my fingers under the back of her hoodie, her shirt, against the softness of her back, past the waistband of her jeans until the heat of her is in my palm.

My hands are removed. Dropped to the bed on either side of my head, held in place with red bands of her energy.

Is this okay? 

I push against her binding. It’s light. I haven’t mastered my powers yet, but I know I could break them. They’re warm too. I wonder if her magic always feels this way. 

Yes.

She kisses me then. Light on the lips. Is this okay? 

Yes. 

She kisses me again like my kiss is air. Like her tongue is breaking the compounds down and cataloging them so each part of me can always be found. 

My neck is next. Wanda’s kiss is soft, her teeth softer still. Is this okay?

Yes.

She leaves a mark there. With her lips and her tongue and her teeth, pulling at my skin. Sucking it into her mouth, soothing it with her lips. I want her to leave more, but she moves on, kisses her way back to my breast, takes my nipple lightly into her mouth, slides her tongue around my hardened peak.

Is this okay? 

Yes. 

She takes me in her mouth and I gasp. She sucks until she’s full, makes her way down my body asking for permission at every new stop.

Yes. 

Again and again, yes. 

My body hums with those letters racing through my veins. 

Before Wanda enters me, she removes her restraints. My body throbs as she hovers, her face so close to where I need her fingers and her tongue and the respite that was promised.

She’s there for so long, waiting for so long, I wonder if she can’t, if she’s run out of steam and the memories have caught up. 

It’s okay, I say. I lift myself onto my elbows. Wanda, it’s okay. You don’t have to. Moments pass. Slow or fast, I can’t tell, but I live a life within them. Finally, she looks at me and I see it’s not hesitance. It’s reverence. It’s love. Not for me, but for what’s been lost. Grief for not going back, for moving forward, for standing still, for wanting a next step. That’s the thing you don’t learn until you’re in it—that grief is a shapeshifter, finding you where you didn’t know to look. 

Her tears are quiet. They drop onto me and into me and mix with my wetness. When she licks me, one long glide over my slit until my clit is sucked into her mouth, I nearly come. It’s been so long. Longer than I even know. I was here, then I was gone, and when I came back my world had moved on without me. Sometimes I don’t know if all the parts of me will ever catch up.

Is this okay? Her lips move against me with the question.

Yes. Please, yes.

She licks again. Sucks, nibbles, maps a trail with her tears and my need. 

When she finally enters me, two fingers in and out, lips sucking my clit, hips grinding into her face, hands gripping her hair, when she finally enters me and reaches that spot, the one that answers questions unasked, that steals the breath from my lungs and lifts my body off the bed, when she finally enters me, she gives me her grief, and I mix it with mine and we make it something new. The room lights up, a pale pink like a birthing star. 

The light is everywhere—against my skin, in my lungs, trailing from her lips, burning through me and into her. The particles expand and expand then release me in a burst. I collapse amidst an earthquake, trembling, searching for breath, my body, Wanda, kissing her way back up to me.

Thank you, she whispers after every kiss. 

Thank you. 

Thank you.

Thank you.

When she reaches my lips, I kiss her softly over and over. I take as much as I want, as much as I need, until my breath settles and my body stills. 

She curls against me, still fully clothed, warm against my skin. She wills the bedsheets over us, they settle against her sigh.

I fall asleep first, I think. 

In the morning, the sun is bright, bold. Streaming through the windows. Glinting off of Wanda’s hair. It’s not forever, I know. Just a break from the storm. 

It could be enough, though. Enough to keep me going. To keep my heart above water. We can float here a little while longer. The world will find us when it’s ready.


End file.
